Iraqi Athletes Scour Field of Nightmares

By ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: August 17, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 16—
When Ahmed al-Samarrai returned to the sports club where he once coached Iraq's national basketball team, he did not recognize it.

The gym had been demolished. The grass on the soccer field was uncut, and some of the sandstone buildings were starting to crumble.

That was the least of it. Virtually every athlete at the club has physical or mental scars inflicted by Saddam Hussein's older son, Uday, who took control of Iraq's Olympic Committee in 1984 and began a terrifying campaign of torture and humiliation. Many fled the country, including Mr. Samarrai.

''The fields you can rebuild and change,'' Mr. Samarrai said as he gazed out at the grounds of the club, known as Al Karkh. ''But with human beings it's a different matter.''

A heavy-set man with large dark eyes and an air of quiet gravity, Mr. Samarrai now has the assignment of restoring both fields and athletes as chairman of the Interim Iraqi Committee to Administer Sports, which was created by American occupation officials in April.

The committee has already cleared out all of Iraq's sports clubs, from neighborhood teams to the Olympic committee, and begun replacing them with democratically elected groups.

''The system of the regime started in primary school,'' said Mr. Samarrai, who defected on a trip to Switzerland in 1983 and returned here after the war. ''It was exactly like the Nazis in the 30's.''

Uday Hussein was atop the system though largely independent of it. By many accounts, he transformed the Olympic Committee into a front for extortion and shady business deals.

''Uday played hell with sports,'' said Immanuel Baba Dano, a revered figure in Iraq who was coach of the national soccer team for most of the last three decades. Mr. Dano, who is 68 and known throughout the country as Amu Baba, worked closely with Uday Hussein for many years, but not by choice.

Some athletes were humiliated, he said. Others were smeared with feces and jailed. Some were placed in a sarcophagus with nails pointed inward so that they would be punctured and suffocated, he said. At least a few were set in front of wild dogs to be torn to pieces. How many were executed is still not clear.

''Nobody knew what was in his mind,'' Mr. Dano said. ''But there was no pity.''

When the Americans arrived in April, they quickly identified sports as an important element in reconstruction -- one of few unifying forces in a country fiercely divided by region and religion.

Donald Eberly, the American official in charge of the effort, created the 26-member committee of Iraqi coaches and other sports figures that would carry out the changes, and Mr. Samarrai was elected chairman.

Since April, Mr. Eberly and his committee have imported more than 80,000 soccer balls, distributing most to youth clubs and children.

They have supervised more than 200 elections in athletic organizations, removing those close to the Hussein government and making sure to set aside positions for women.

By September, they hope to have a national assembly capable of electing an Olympic committee, in accordance with Olympic bylaws. They are also documenting Uday Hussein's abuses of athletes.

Some Iraqi athletes say the effort has already had an impact.

''Before, there was always a list of Baath Party people who had to be nominated,'' said Basil Fadhil, a soccer coach who is a newly elected officer of the Thuri sports club in Baghdad. ''Now there is freedom, a chance for the player to express his own point of view.''

But as in every part of the reconstruction effort here, some Iraqis resent the Americans' reliance on dissidents like Mr. Samarrai, who escaped abroad while others stayed and suffered. Some also say the Americans have left too many members of the old leadership in place.

''I am back to sports, but nothing has changed,'' said Hayder Abed al-Jabarah, a former national swimming champion who was banned from the sport and jailed for almost a decade after he accidentally offended Uday Hussein. ''The head of the swimmers' union is the same man who has been there since 1982. And the same people are benefiting.''

As for Mr. Dano, he said he believed that Mr. Eberly and his committee were well intentioned and had done some good. But they are moving far too slowly, he said. The country's soccer fields are still in terrible condition, and young people need an outlet.

''They want only fields and balls, to play, to forget their problems,'' Mr. Dano said. ''But if you don't help them, they have nothing else, they will want to fight and kill Americans.''

Photo: Nawad Saad, 9, boxed in Baghdad using American-flag gloves supplied through the old oil-for-food program. (Photo by Lynsey Addario/Corbis, for The New York Times)